


The Riddle

by QuixoticRobotics



Category: Tuck Everlasting - Miller/Tysen/Shear & Federle, Tuck Everlasting - Natalie Babbitt
Genre: F/M, all u need to know is miles had TWO kids and the tucks were less well off, based on the book more than the musical, fleshing out minor girl characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-27 03:13:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18295685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuixoticRobotics/pseuds/QuixoticRobotics
Summary: Something isn't right and no one can say why. The lack of answers is bothering Rose





	The Riddle

Rose had always been smart. Miles figured she must have been the cleverest person he ever had the pleasure of knowing. There wasn’t a problem she couldn’t solve, no riddle she couldn’t find an answer to. So he knew that when she stroked his cheek and looked at him lovingly, she was searching to an answer to a riddle neither of them had an answer to.   
  
Rose adored Miles. He was hardworking, honest, and kind. She’d been so happy to marry him and so happy to start a family with him. He was a wonderful father, she’d never heard any sweeter noise than Tomas and Anna’s laughter when he played with them.    
  
She gazed up at him, placing a hand on his cheek. She grinned softly, thinking back to how he’d looked on their wedding day. But sadness shone in her eyes as her brows furrowed. Because how he looked was the problem.    
  
The only difference between the man she’d exchanged vows with on her wedding day and the man who stood before her now was his expression. The warm gaze and lovesick smile had been replaced with a somber expression and dark brown eyes, too filled with guilt to look at her face   
  
It was uncanny. This was the man she loved but the body she woke up next to every morning wasn’t the body that should have been there. It was a memory with a beating heart. Every smile, every laugh, every part of him she’d fell in love with had an unshakable wrongness to it.   
  
Rose’s discomfort was evident, and Miles hated it. He couldn’t help feel he’d did something wrong. This wasn’t something that happened to normal people, it wasn’t something people like Rose needed to deal with.   
  
One day she’d traveled off their tiny farm and into town one day to ask the physician if he’d ever heard of such an unusual ailment.    
  
The only book in their tiny cabin was The Holy Bible, and Miles figured he might as well do some research of his own, unwilling to have his wife be forced to solve his burden. When Rose had gotten home she’d found no answers, but Miles had started to put together a theory of his own.    
  
When Rose had first heard the idea it had seemed outright foolish. The Tucks were good people! Miles’s Mother and Father had shown her absolutely nothing but kindness, and she knew the story of Miles’s brother miraculously surviving a tree fall that ought to have killed him. There was nothing Miles or anyone in his family could have possibly done to anger The Lord. She’d told Miles this, and he’d smiled and said she was probably right, smart as she was. Yet she could tell he couldn’t shake the idea.   
  
But time had passed. She’d watched the seasons change and their children grow. But Miles didn’t change. And as the weeks changed into months and the months had turned into years, the idea that the Tucks had upset something about the natural order of things became a constant presence in the back of her mind.    
  


**Author's Note:**

> This fic was gonna have way more of me flexing my historical knowledge but unfortunately that didn't make it in. But yeah I hate how ppl write rose's fear as some witchcraft accusation bullshit. These people had no scientific explanation for what was happening, "????????god???" makes sense as the next logical conclusion for people of this era. Also if i was like 40 and my husband still looked 22 i'd be p creeped out
> 
> this borrows elements of the musical (Tomas having a name, i also assume thats where rose's name comes from) but its based on the book bc i like the book better as a story. basically all you need to know is: the tucks are much less well off than in the musical (no farmhouses, just tiny cabins), they moved west instead of east, and mile's had two kids, one of whom was a daughter named Anna. 
> 
> I realized that this whole thing kinda resembles my favorite twilight zone episode: The Last Rights of Jeff Myrtlebank


End file.
